Florida Sen. Marco Rubio took home his re-election contest Tuesday night, defeating Rep. Patrick Murphy and giving Republicans a key win in a race that was up for grabs prior to June.

Rubio dropped out of the presidential race on March 15, but then made waves with a late entrance into the Senate race after saying for the better part of a year that he would not run for his seat if he lost the GOP nomination, having joked on Twitter that he had made the comment “10,000 times.”